In a previous post I wrote about the IABM’s US market workshops, which I attended last week in San Francisco and New York. During my presentations about the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey, a few people asked for clarification on some data and/or for a cut of the data that is different than what I was showing at the time.

When I got back from the meetings, I extracted this additional information and sent it to the relevant parties. I figured that others might be interested to see this as well, so here it is.

One question was about whether there is significant regional variation in the preference for broadcasters to purchase from a single vendor versus a range of “best-of-breed” suppliers. A follow-on question was whether there was variation in purchasing preference based on the size of the broadcaster.

Here’s the chart from this post, which shows that the majority of buyers, regardless of their type, prefer to evaluate multiple vendors and purchase best-of-breed solutions.

Q: When purchasing broadcast technology products, do you prefer to buy from a single “one-stop-shop” or select “best-of-breed” solutions from multiple vendors?

The above chart looks at the total market on a global basis, and does not break out the responses for each customer type geographically.

I thought it would be interesting to do this for broadcasters, and the results are shown in the chart below, which compares the response of the overall global sample (called “everyone” here), with the responses of all broadcasters and then regional broadcasters — there is some regional variation.

The chart above shows that broadcasters have a strong preference to purchase “best-of-breed” solutions, but there are some variations. Broadcasters in the Americas show a higher preference towards a single supplier versus the average of all broadcasters, while Asian broadcasters show a higher preference towards best-of-breed versus the average.

The next question takes it one level further, and asks whether these preferences hold true for broadcasters of all sizes — i.e. how do broadcasters of different sizes prefer to purchase broadcast technology products and services? To find out I did another cut of the broadcaster data from the chart above. In this case I did not look at geography, but at the size of the broadcaster.

The results are shown in the table below:

As you can see, the results are fairly consistent, and once again there is an overwhelming preference is to evaluate multiple vendors and choose best of breed solutions.

You’ll note that there is an extra bar on this chart — the one for US Network Broadcasters. As an interesting point of comparison, I have also included these results since I happened to have collected this data during the research. US networks are some of the industry’s largest customers and they are usually in the largest cities (such as New York) where many vendors have sales offices. US broadcast networks show the strongest preference towards buying from a single supplier when compared other broadcasters — more than double other large (1000+ employee) broadcasters.

If you’re a broadcast technology vendor, is this consistent with your experience? Please let me know.